


Moments in Love: Out of Turmoil

by Entwife_Incognito



Series: "Moments in Love" [3]
Category: The Mentalist
Genre: Angst, Communication, F/M, Makeup Sex, Reconciliation, Threats of Violence, relationship angst, smutty smut smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-30
Updated: 2016-11-30
Packaged: 2018-09-03 08:13:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8704684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Entwife_Incognito/pseuds/Entwife_Incognito
Summary: NOTICE: Threat to male body integrity is a part of this story. Threat only, not completion. The course of love is not rosy just because it is deep and true. People make mistakes. Patrick breaks a promise. Teresa's feelings surprise and overwhelm her. One-shot. Pretty Angsty. Disclaimer: I own nothing about The Mentalist.Originally posted at FFnet on July 25, 2014. Now here, with minor edits for readability.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Prompts from Anonymous and Isabel on Tumblr got this story started. Thanks!
> 
> Threat to male body integrity is a part of this story. Jane and Lisbon's feelings and reactions are their own and not meant to minimize or deflect the issues for people who must deal with such things in real life.

_I had an icy tantrum. It was big, ugly and unworthy of me. It was as numbing and out of my control as any weather pattern. The blizzard inside carried me away and did terrible, thoughtless things while blinding everyone with an icy veil of magnanimous purity._  


Lisbon hadn't seen Jane all afternoon. That wasn't unusual. But nobody had seen him. He wasn't answering his phone or texts. Since he and Lisbon had finally found each other, he never did that, always answered, always made sure she knew where he was on the job. She drove to the Airstream first. Maybe he had holed up in his man-cave to get away from the bullpen, bored numb without a new case and the team thumbing through cold case files. It didn't explain why he hadn't responded to hails of his phone.  


No car. The motor home was empty, and everything was as they'd left it from the weekend. She tried her home next, hoping to find him napping soundly, a soft snore on his lips, his dead phone charging. But he wasn't there. No car. No phone. Something was very wrong. The fact that Jane not calling or leaving word had become a rarity deepened Lisbon's dread.  


_The feeling of panic went deep into the root of my body, spreading a hollow, fathomless pain. It shocked me. He had done this many times over the years. But it was different now. We were together. I had more than professional feelings about it, though I had those, too. I had more than secret personal feelings about it. This was an open, deep love and loss, "my man" kind of thing. It broadsided me, deep emotional reaction of every kind by turns and together. I had never felt so hurt and confused. How could I control all the things boiling inside me? I couldn't even sort them. It was hard to think. It was hard to control myself. I'm sure I looked crazy to everyone around me._  


_Only two times in my life had I felt this, both when I was a little girl. I couldn't think of losing him, too. We were so new, so fresh. Where had he gone? What was happening to him? I'd kill him when we got home! My fear and anger mounted each other, fucking me into absolute panic. I couldn't face losing Patrick. A better option would be to die myself._  


_That's how bad it was. I didn't know how to be that committed woman, in a situation ordinary to almost anyone. I paced our kitchen, emotion's puppet, cursing him, screaming my breath away and then forcing more from my crouching body, tensed just for that purpose. I fell to the floor, wanting him there and holding me, sobbing and hyperventilating until I grew dizzy. I needed him to walk through the door and tell me it was all right. I had to lie down and prop my feet on the cabinets to force blood back into my head so I wouldn't pass out. I was grateful to be at home, venting the incendiary feelings that threatened to obliterate me. I couldn't lose him! I'd just got him! Work would demand I clamp them from consciousness. I would demand that of myself and probably fail. Opening my heart to Patrick, loving him, made it impossible to control myself, alone in my own house with this first, real or imagined, loss._  


Something was wrong. Jane would never do this to her again, not willingly. When Lisbon was capable of sensible action, she called Cho to report the situation. Listening, he gave quiet directs to Wiley, who began tracking Jane's movements, the GPS path on screen, both phone and car. After a point, the two separated, joined by another phone and a different car. The area was too remote and the data sets too contiguous to consider coincidence. Jane had either met someone and left with them. Or he'd been taken against his will. When Jane's phone stopped moving in the middle of nowhere while the new phone and car moved on, the team was sure this was a kidnapping. Luckily, it seemed to be by amateurs who didn't know the subtleties of GPS.  


Cho and Fischer picked Lisbon up on their way to where the car and phone had stopped. Her eyes were swollen and her voice hoarse. They both understood why and said nothing. They had a name now. Bryan Hemmings, once a suspect who turned out not to be the perp on an old cold case whose file Jane was reviewing. The investigator at the time had worked Hemmings over good during the original interrogation. His wife believed he was guilty and had apparently used it as an excuse to leave him because she didn't come back when her Bryan was cleared. The man hated the FBI and Patrick Jane as a target could no doubt satisfy Hemmings's apparent impulse for revenge. Jane's phone log showed he'd called Hemmings shortly before disappearing, apparently on his way to meet with the man.  


"Why didn't he call, Cho? Why didn't he tell anybody where he was going? Take back-up?"  


"Maybe that's the only way Hemmings would meet him. He could have made threats . . . coerced Jane. A million reasons."  


_Fuck that! Fuck that shit!_ "He knows better. And he promised never to do it again."  


Fischer looked at her sharply. They all knew Jane better than that. "You know there's always extenuating circumstances with Jane," she offered cautiously. "Maybe he was going to call you from the car but got snatched before he could."  


"He should never have entered that car without telling someone-! Me! I don't believe this! He knows how destructive it is to our . . . our . . ." _Damn him to hell!"_  


Fischer and Cho didn't need to hear what Jane was destroying with Lisbon. Both agents knew very well. While Jane and Lisbon's new relationship was not a secret to the team, the personal aspects were kept mostly under wraps day to day. It was a shame that one of their rare windows into the life of the couple featured their troubles instead of their happiness.  


Cho checked in with Wiley to see if there had been any movement.  


"No. Still at the last known location."  


"Okay. We're on our way. Approaching the city limits. Notify the Travis County sheriff and have him send backup to that location. But they need to stay out of sight. We don't want to panic a potential kidnapper."  


"Roger. They're on the line right now. Good luck, you guys."  


They passed Jane's car, the driver's side door still open, keys in the ignition. Stopping to check that he wasn't stowed, unconscious or lying in the weeds, they secured the vehicle quickly and moved on. Fischer spotted a phone on the side of the road in the area GPS had designated. They stopped to pick it up. It was Jane's. Fischer checked its contents from the back seat as they continued on their route.  


"Yeah. There's a message here but it didn't get sent. SOZ?"  


"Shit!" Cho sped up. "That's Jane's twist on SOS. We need to get to the Hemmings place fast!  


The sheriff was already there with backup, four deputies scattered behind a line of old oak trees at the edge of the yard. Hemmings's car was parked in the dirt drive.  


Not a hardened criminal, but an innocent country guy with a shotgun, Hemmings's rage detonated like a phosphorus grenade when Jane had identified himself as FBI on the phone But he'd kept it under wraps to lure Jane and take some revenge. Certainly an amateur, the losses he'd sustained, alone and mulling his angry wounds for years, made him a dangerously unstable amateur. Speaking as if to an estranged friend, let bygones be bygones, he told Jane where to meet him, to come alone or he wouldn't talk. Jane foolishly took the chance.  


Taken hostage at shotgun and bound to a kitchen chair, useless adrenalin surged through Jane, playing dead-end scenarios for escape. He was helplessly restrained, his only hope to delay Hemmings until help could arrive, counting on the team to notice he was missing in enough time to find and rescue him. Why hadn't he left word where he was going? He'd left them completely blind, The great Patrick Jane, need backup? Yes. That idiot. Jane found that fearing for his life and person was almost secondary. Surviving might not be better. His terror was that Lisbon would be so angry, she'd turn him out when she discovered what he'd done without telling her. It felt unforgivable at this stage in their relationship. He should have told her. His explanations why he hadn't were insignificant, even to him.  


How could he tell Lisbon what this deranged man was trying to do to him? It would only heighten her fear and anger, make the situation worse. He was afraid to tell her. He was desperate to tell her. He didn't know how to tell her. If Hemmings killed him, he wouldn't have to tell her. His bowels were water, just thinking of it.  


Both of their heads turned sharply to the sound of crunching tires outside. Several cars had pulled up. Relief flooding his body, Jane exhaled fully at last and broke into a sweat, keeping an eye on his captor. Even Hemmings seemed relieved to have a way out of the mess. 

Hemmings was not a killer. It took courage and determination to kill or maim. And a strong stomach. He seemed not to know what to do once he had Jane duct-taped to a chair in his kitchen, rambling and sometimes crying. Jane's attempts to apologize did create brief points of calm in the man's emotional storm. He'd lost everything. Jane knew what that was like, what it was to want someone to pay, someone to be sorry for what they'd done.  


The FBI and the sheriff's department moved in with a megaphone, notifying Hemmings that they had the house surrounded and if he needed to come out in a safe, non-threatening manner. Eyes darting, Hemmings found a thread of logic in the extremes of his circumstances, and surrendered, leaving a trembling Jane still bound, hesitant slash marks from a sharp hunting knife on the front of his trousers.  


After Cho loosened his last bond, the agent said in Jane's ear, "See ya. Wouldn't wanna be ya. And, you're an idiot." Then he had left Jane to his fate. Once freed, he ran a hand against his belly, feeling for cuts and examining his hand for blood, but there was nothing. He made a trip to the bathroom to relieve the relentless cramping heat in his belly. He double-checked for wounds. None. Just a ruined pair of pants. His underwear wasn't even scored. Jane was sure Hemmings would not have actually castrated him, but not a hundred percent sure.  


Scared to do what was burning in his mind. Hemmings's efforts were hesitant, tentative. If the team had arrived even a few minutes later, maybe . . . Jane was shaking as nausea threatened to overwhelm him. Lisbon was right. What had seemed simple and innocent had become a looming threat to his body and life. Her relief at his safety had probably already passed. Jane's worst fears were confirmed when he saw Lisbon's face.  


This was vastly more grievous than Lisbon in a serious snit. Hanging his head, he passed her without a sideways glance. She refused to sit with him in the car, making him take the passenger seat with Cho. At the office, she filed her report and left without even hearing what had happened to him, without asking how he was. He couldn't stop the waves of despair, fear and abandonment.  


When Jane came out of interview and Lisbon had gone, his heart pounded in such a panic that he felt hot, light-headed and ready to vomit. If she abandoned him, it was his own fault. But that did nothing to temper his emotions. He bent low to let blood flow back into his head. He thought of going to the Airstream. But it would make matters worse if he ran even that far from Lisbon tonight. He had nowhere to go but home. If he had to leave it, Lisbon would have to toss him out.  


_The level of fury that filled me was new, cycling surges that overwhelmed me and clouded my thinking. I was relieved, so relieved, Jane was without injury except for the burns from the tape on his wrists and those strange marks on his clothes. Keeping my distance, I didn't know what they were. He was walking and unharmed. That was good enough for any lawman and in my cold anger, I gave him no more notice and didn't consider that Jane was no lawman._  


_Good old Patrick Jane. Unscathed. Again. I fought off the wish that he had been hurt a little, enough to teach him a lesson. I missed him already, waiting for him to come through the door and face me. Waiting on a target for the cold blast of my withering rage, maybe. Part of me hated the feeling and hoped the worst would dissipate so I could be fair with him, provide comfort if he needed it. Part of me just wanted satisfaction for the promise he broke._  


_When the lock was keyed and the doorknob turned, I stood off the kitchen to face the door, but at a distance. My arms were folded. I must have looked like a harpy but he showed no signs of irritation when he saw me, only surrender. He closed the door and stood in the entryway, his head still hanging. He hadn't looked at me since his rescue. His contrite expectation of my right to raze him to the ground took the wind out of my self-righteous sails. With that gone, I didn't know what to say. It only left my fear and the love that lurked over everything. I'd always found a way to stay in control when he pushed all my buttons. But this was exponentially more than a lover's quarrel. Our newly coupled life had never been at such risk. I was sad._  


"Do you have any idea how afraid I've been, Jane?"  


"Maybe a little."  


"I was afraid you were dead."  


Jane was miserable enough to wonder if maybe she wished he _was_ dead. He kept his head down and said nothing.  


"Look at me, Jane. Look at me!"  


He was shocked to hear her yell and mortified to see the tears flowing down her pain-filled face. But he held her gaze.  


"I said I thought you were dead."  


"You must have thought that many times since you've known me." It wasn't the right thing to say.  


Lisbon discovered that her anger was not gone, just hovering in wait for an opening. "What? So that makes it okay? It shouldn't matter?"  


"No. Of course it matters. I'm just say-."  


"You don't know what you're saying. I. Thought. You. Were DEAD, Jane!" She was almost screaming, her words punctuated by vicious sobs. She ignored them but lowered her voice a few decibels. "For the first time since we admitted our love and have been together. I thought you were dead! Do you have any idea what that did to me? You should."  


"Yes. Yes, I do." She was referring to his own losses.  


"Do you know what I wanted to do?"  


"Kill me yourself?" Also not the right thing to say. He should just shut up.  


"You bastard! How can you try to make light of this? Me, Patrick. I wanted to die. I thought I would die." She pointed into the kitchen. "Right here on this kitchen floor when you weren't at the Airstream and weren't here. When we discovered that your car was abandoned and your phone tossed. I thought I would die. Just crumple as my heart stopped beating. If you had been dead, I would have died, Patrick. To have you taken from me. So soon. Our love hasn't even begun to grow to what it will be. I would have given up. I wouldn't know how to go on." Her voice dropped to a raw whisper. "I, I thought I would die. The pain of not knowing. I, I thought I was dying. Or, or going crazy." She sighed. "I don't know what, what was happening to me, what is happening to me."  


Loving him so much was what had made her crazy with pain. Jane wished she would let him take her into his arms, kiss away her pain and fear, feel how he was still alive, loving her. He desperately needed to be in her arms, confessing his wrongdoing and the horrifics of what had happened to him. Tell her she was right and he really would never do it again. But being in each other's arms might be over. She made him witness a level of pain that drove him to comfort her. But he could not. He started to cry, big hot drops of stress and regret.  


"Tell me you know the pain I'm talking about, Jane. I know it might not be as great as yours was when you opened that door . . ."  


God, she was cruel. He faced her again, tears freely flowing and a spark of anger in eyes like lightning over a stormy sea.  


"But for me, it was the worst since the loss of my mother and then my father. He chose what he did, knowingly abandoning me. The same as you did today. It's that kind of pain. What's in the past rings through what's happening here. The conflicting hope and fear of what could be real, but might not be, tore me apart. Loss, Jane. Loss and bereavement of the person I love most in the world. There is no way to say how much."  


The way she spoke made their losses resonate together, bigger and harder than ever. His heart plummeted as he realized the depths of agony she communicated. He was scum. He had promised to do everything he could to make her happy. And he had failed on the smallest of requirements. "Should I leave? Go to the Airstream . . . or . . . or, or somewhere more, more permanent?"  


"No."  


"Are you leaving me?"  


"Never. I'm never leaving you, Jane, or making you leave against your will. You're half of my heart, half of my body, half of my life. If you're gone, how do I live? But what have you done? What have you done to my trust in you? That's the destruction you should be worried about, what scares me shitless. It's much worse than turning you out. "  


"I've destroyed your trust? All of it?"  


"I honestly don't know yet. I'm too muddled with all these conflicting feelings to know anything."  


"Lisbon! Teresa! I'm sorry. You know I am."  


"I know. I know that. I just hope it's enough to repair the damage that you've done today."  


"I wasn't thinking. It was a cold case. Just an interview with an old suspect."  


"Who could have been the murderer, Jane! Or could have become one, just for you."  


"Please. Forgive me. Forgive me or I don't know how I can survive!"  


"You are forgiven. You are! It's not that. My anger and hurt, my fear, will eventually fade. We said we would always forgive each other, no matter what. But it's not magic, it's heart, it's love. There's still damage that has to heal. And I don't know how to do that right now. Do you understand?"  


"I love you, Teresa. That's the only thing I understand. No matter what I've done. I love you with everything I am."  


"I know that. I do."  


"I'm so stupid. So stubborn and arrogant. I shouldn't have left the building without telling you exactly what I was doing on the case. I shouldn't have. Why did I? I'm unforgivable. You have every right to hate me and turn me away."  


"That would sure make it easy, Patrick. But I don't hate you. I love you. You are definitely forgivable. I just don't know how to heal yet. I'm too angry and hurt." Honesty about her chaotic feelings confused them both.  


Jane didn't speak. If she would only let him help her heal! Let him hold her. Make her know how sorry he was. How close they had come to destruction, even without her anger and his culpability. That he'd never do it again.  


"Why did you leave without telling me, Jane?"  


"I attributed it as too minor, too unimportant. I think I just didn't want to knuckle under. It was stupid."  


"Yes. It was. But it helps to hear you say it. I do know how hard it can be to knuckle under sometimes. And I know it's something relatively new for you. And I know how much work you've put in to get better at it. A lot better. I'm not trying to take your balls."  


Although he didn't say anything, Jane tensed and his eyes grew cloudy, pain showing in his face.  


_Perhaps I shouldn't have phrased it so crudely. But I didn't know! I didn't know the whole story. I just needed him to see that I understood about not wanting to knuckle under. Everybody feels like that sometimes. I wasn't attacking his manhood. I was trying to be fair and calm myself at the same time._  


_He should have told me. I guess I didn't give him the chance. If I'd even asked, I think he would have told me right away, not stayed silent until it was tearing him apart. Not telling me was tearing him apart already. He was trying to cleave to me. Trying to find a cleaving place anywhere in me. But I was closed in my own feelings._  


Jane flopped into an armchair and leaned on his elbows, head in hands. He needed her, needed to tell her what Hemmings had attempted. But Lisbon was focused on his initial idiocy and not its terrifying fruit.  


"I'm going to take a shower and go to bed."  


"But dinner . . ."  


"I'm not hungry."  


"You have to eat, Lisbon. You'll get too thin. You need to keep up your energy and health on this job."  


"One meal won't matter. It would curdle in my stomach right now."  


His sadness deepened. "Am I to sleep out here?"  


"I hope you don't. Our bed is still for both of us." She walked towards the bathroom, then stopped and turned. "I hope you understand that I don't feel exactly . . . close to you right now. But you always have my love. And our goodnight hug and kiss. Same as any other night, whether we have, have sex or not tonight." She felt sad as she turned from him for her shower.  


Patrick heard Teresa crying as her shower ran. He waited until he saw the light go out in the bedroom and heard her crawl into the covers, still sniffling intermittently. Then he padded quietly into the bathroom to clean up.  


_I wore a tee shirt and pajama pants, reiterating the barrier between us that night. I hated it and felt utterly alone but I was still confused, shaken from our ordeal. I knew Patrick must be, too. After all, he was the one kidnapped and restrained. I tried very hard to show consideration for his feelings, and mine, too. It was a balance doomed to fail without complete information._  


_When he came out, he wore tops and bottoms, too. He draped his clothes on the back of a chair and got into bed, crawling up his side from the bottom, not touching me. He must have felt very low because he didn't seek his goodnight kiss. I crept over and gave it to him. I needed him still, needed his kiss to know there was still a way to each other. His lips were warm and soft and he stroked my hair. He seemed too exhausted or too broken to attempt a hug. Perhaps both. But he didn't seek comfort from me, merely did as I asked and kept his side of the bed._  


_We could have been comforting each other and rejoicing at our reunion. I wanted him, but once again I withheld the most vulnerable part of myself. Would I never learn to listen, to ask what it had been like for him, what had happened to him? I was exhausted, too, but I waited to hear his breathing even out before I let myself drop away into sleep._  


_He woke me much later. At first I thought he had reached for me in the middle of a bad dream. But he was awake, trying to wake me, saying my name and shaking my shoulder. At least I had the heart to realize I'd been angry enough with him for one night. He was desperate to tell me something._  


He curled around her, holding Teresa in the cocoon of his body, trembling, his breath quick and anxious.  


"Jane? Jane! What's wrong?"  


He held her closer. "Don't be afraid of me. Don't be scared. Don't turn away."  


She scooted closer to his chest and folded her hands over his arms where they wrapped her stomach. "Shhh, shhh. You don't frighten me, Jane. You couldn't. You love me." She pulled his arms tighter around her. "What you do scares me sometimes, what it means to me. I know it's selfish-."  


"I was so afraid tonight, Teresa, terrified."  


Enough spooning. Lisbon turned in his arms to wrap hers around his chest and push him to the pillow, looking into his worried face. "Hey," she said softly. "Everything is all right. We're safe here in our bed." Maybe he had been dreaming, not fully awake yet.  


He tried to curl around her again but their position wouldn't allow it. "Sometimes I get so scared, that I'll lose you, you'll disappear, I'll do something so wrong and I'll never see you again. I don't know why. It just comes over me. I'm desperate to find you and hold you in my arms and never ever let go. I think I'll die if I don't."  


Fingers in his sweaty curls, she kissed his cheeks. "There now, I'm right here. I haven't gone anywhere. I wouldn't." She kissed him again and let her hands rove his neck and arms. "Are you dreaming? Can you feel me?"  


He was slippery with the sweat of his anxiety. His eyes were squeezed shut, his face in a grimace of pain. "Hemmings-." He didn't know how to tell her.  


"He's arrested. He's gone. Open your eyes. You'll see I'm here. Please open your eyes. I love you. I've never stopped loving you." She was talking too much, but she didn't know what would reassure him and she needed to make him connect with her.  


Patrick's face relaxed a bit before he let his eyes slit open. Tension still made his breathing tight. He kissed her cheeks, her ear, her hair, groaning as short gusts of air were torn from his lungs.  


"See? I'm here. I haven't gone anywhere. I love you, Patrick. I need you. I have to have you with me, just as you need me." What the hell had happened to him in that kitchen? He was going through something now in the middle of the night that she didn't understand yet. "I love you. Say you hear me."  


He barely nodded.  


Teresa could see it still wasn't real to him. "Make love to me. I need you to make love to me." Then he would feel how real she was.  


She kissed him, caressed his lips with her tongue. He let go of his breath with a strangling sound to suck in the probing heat, then invaded her mouth like a starving man. He was getting hard and she took hold of him inside his pajama bottoms, feeling his erection telescope through her curled hand.  


"Can you feel me touching you, holding what I want inside me?"  


"Yes!"  


Their mouths still connected in a passionate kiss, he rolled her to her back and she let go of his hard flesh.  


"No! Don't let go of me!"  


"I'm not. I'm just getting out of the way so you can hold me inside." But she reached into his clothing and took hold of his naked skin, and his sighs were relief. She tugged on his pants with her other hand, getting them to the tops of his thighs, then started pulling hers down. "Get your clothes off. Get mine off. Please hurry. I'm ready for you. Please. Now."  


When they were naked, Teresa wedged close, prying him up with her hip and leg until he began to climb on top of her. She brought up her knees, opening to him. His hips swiveled to get to her hot wet center and he pushed in, sliding home, making her hips buck as she gave a little cry.  


"Oh, god, Teresa, this is what I need-. You! You don't know how much." She was swollen-soft and yielding. He could feel every inch of her, soaking in her heat!  


"I need you, too. Don't wait or try to make me come before you. Just move in me, however you want, however you can feel me best. That's what I want."  


He moved slowly, like a blind explorer, touching everything and memorizing by feel, starting each new stroke at a new angle. His ears were open to her breath, attuned to her nearly subsonic moaning. He heard love there, always with his name. A rich swell of passionate love took his body and made him its instrument, its sound possessing his throat and breathing its words into her ear.  


His assailant's threats intruded, rode his back, snaked his neck to choke him. But he made words of love come out, emptied them into the ears of the woman who loved him and would receive them. "Teresa."  


She didn't realize he wanted her to answer. "Teresa!"  


"Hey. It's okay, I hear you. Tell me."  


"Hemmings-he, he wasn't going to kill me. He was going to cut me, cut me! So I couldn't, I couldn't-." He let go of a choking sob and it released a river of them but he talked through it. "My darling love." Squeezing her tightly, he pushed deep into her. "He was going to cut off everything, my dick, my balls. So I couldn't be a man to you anymore! Like he felt when his wife didn't want him anymore. He couldn't do it, but he was practicing, getting bolder so he could. Hacking at me. I was so afraid, so afraid! I would lose you. I would never be able to make you happy, never feel the joy of making love to you again. Alive and in hell. I thought you'd never find me. That he would-."  


Teresa had stopped moving to listen as he confessed his terror, starting to soften inside her. Regret burned her sinking soul. Taking hold of his cheeks, she looked into eyes full of pain. "Patrick. I'd love you no matter what happened to you. We'd figure it out. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I let you down. I didn't even ask what had happened while you were captive." She groaned and begged him to forgive her. As deep as her fear of losing him, what Patrick had endured- the fright, the threat to his body and to his essence as a man- must have been intolerable. She hadn't known. She'd only reacted to her own panic. His was as real as hers, and their terrible fear and sadness fell from the idea of losing one another. Nothing worse could happen. Devastation.  


"I forgive you, Teresa. I always forgive you." The words freed him somehow, and he thrust deep, speaking to her in their act of love. "We said we would. I love you. I know why you were mad."  


"I'm not mad anymore. I love you and I want you. Hemmings is a demented asshole and you're home with me now." She put both hands on his bottom, filling them with his flesh, squeezing, holding him deep as she started kissing him again. Then she pushed his shoulders back a little. "My nipples, Jane. Please. Do you want me? Will you kiss them?"  


Jane tucked his fingers under a breast as he would her chin for a kiss. "Always." Kissing gently at first, feeling her delicate flesh respond, soon he grunted softly with relief and pleasure as he tongued and sucked, making her hips writhe around him. He had to move with her, burning with lust.  


Lisbon talked through sensations that made her breathless. "Everything is all right. We're here together, now. It's the only thing that matters."  


He had his hands full of her breasts, pushing them into his mouth by turns, pushing his warm tongue out to make more room for them. His grunting was needier now, a big piglet rooting on her, bowing his back to drive his hips against her hot wet center. His curly hair tantalized Teresa's chest and chin, even her cheek when she laid it against him. Changing the angle of her thrusts lit her core, savoring his stiff length as she moved faster, breathing his name, losing control.  


"You're going to come." Then he whispered, "Come for me, Lisbon . . ." He moved faster, spiraling so he could feel her everywhere on his cock, losing control.  


She talked crudely for him. "Yes! That big fat dick of yours makes a whirlwind inside me. It's spinning, heavy. I love how you feel, big and full and your balls tapping me. I'm going to explode . . . any . . . second!" Something wild and urgent sounded from her throat. "That's so good. Come with me!" Her words wavered as he rode her hard, ecstasy's smile breaking over their faces. "I can feel every bit of you and you're making us come."  


Whatever the poison was, Teresa was drawing it out of him, so tight inside, calling him with her entire body and then her voice.  


"Make love to me. Only you can make love to me." She was gasping now, her core quickening around him.  


The power of what he could do to her, coax from her, sang up his spine and he bowed it harder to take himself deep inside. The last few strokes lifted her from the mattress and he held her there, circling her inside as he watched her flushed upper body begin to thrash. She threw her arms wide and her hands clenched sheets, The arch of her back jammed her quivering pussy low and hard onto his cock.  


Mouthing her neck, he marked her, finishing with a little bite that released a long cry as she clutched him inside, milking him, begging him until, in moments, he let go inside her, fiooding her with the results of their lovemaking. His entire body felt the pulse of his climax. He knew he was filling her with seed and he rejoiced to know he could fill her with children someday.  


Lisbon pressed her hips tight against him and he heard her whisper, "Babies," still in the throes of her orgasm. He was almost certain she didn't know she had said it.  


"Yes, Teresa, babies! Our babies. I want them. He didn't cut me. I can make love until you scream, give you babies! I love you. I love you. So much more. No words." He buried his face at her neck.  


"I know. You're all right, Patrick. So glad." She was still recovering her breath. "Don't ever think about going away from me. No matter what the reason. Never! Do you understand?"  


"Yes. Oh, yes. Never. I don't want to. I want to be with you. Nothing else."  


The healing power of the simple intimate act of making love stunned Lisbon to silence during its afterglow. They had yielded everything to each other and dissolved the distance between them, a balm to their injuries, remaking them, whole, as a couple. Whatever they needed to deal with would be done together.  


_I made Patrick lie back to rest._ "Tea or warm milk?"  
"Warm milk to help me sleep. Will you put some honey in it?"  


"Of course. You'll have sweet dreams while you sleep safe in my arms." _I was desperate to make him feel cozy and safe. I knew he always felt safest against my body. I got up to make toast and jam for our very late dinner._  


_As I was setting the tray on the bed, I glanced at Patrick's clothes on the chair, his pants on top. The pattern was marred somehow. Was that blood? Had he been injured after all? When I ran my fingers across it, I felt the cuts. Hemmings had been too hesitant to make them deep enough or low enough to do the damage dictated by his revenge fantasies._ "Oh, Jesus. Patrick!"  


_I fell on him as gently as I could without upsetting the tray, and caught him biting off a large piece of toast. My arms, wrapped around his neck and squeezing him in dismay, nearly choked him. He managed to set down the remains of the toast and gently remove my arms from his neck, chewing quickly and swallowing so he could give me a crumbly kiss. I took his crumbs and didn't care, crying on his chest until I started hiccuping._  


He pulled me away to offer me a cup. "Here, sweetheart, your milk is still warm enough to drink. It'll soothe you. Everything is all right. Remember?"  


_I nodded and took the cup, sniffling between sips with Patrick's hand settled on my waist until I finished. The milk was comforting. Warm and sweet, nourishing. He fed me toast and jam, finished his and let me get the tray out of the way. When he pulled the covers open, I dove for him, pulling his head to my breast where he sighed and hummed his satisfaction until I finally relaxed my desperate grip. He rested a hand across my butt and we let a sweet exhaustion take us._  


_Waking at dawn, I texted Abbott that I wasn't coming in and that Jane would be out for three days at least. It wasn't a request of either him or Patrick. That's how it was going to be. I pushed the button on the clock to skip the alarm. Then I crawled back to my place under the covers, entwined with the love of my life._  


It was noon before they got up, starving, to fix a big lunch. Afterwards, the warm weather beckoned them to the back yard with beer, talking about the direction of their lives together. They'd had several beers between them.  


"I'm getting off the pill, as of today."  


Jane guzzled the last of his beer and pulled another from the ice chest, opening it for a quick swig. He stared at her as the happiness that bubbled inside him filled his beautiful face. Lisbon thrilled to see it. She offered the neck of her beer bottle and he clinked his against it. Done.  


"Then I'm marrying you next weekend."  


"I'd love to. I'll take another day off. We'll get the rings and the blood tests tomorrow."  


"And a new shirt, for me."  


"And I'll wear the green lace dress you gave me at the Blue Bird."  


"Mmmm, Teresa! I've been wanting to see you in it for so long!"  


"We just didn't know what you'd bought it for."  


He held out his beer bottle and she clinked hers against it. Done. "We'll build a new house to raise our babies. I'll have an architect talk to us next week."  


"Oh! Can we afford it?"  


"After we're married, you'll see how much we can afford. You have nothing to worry about." He winked at her and offered the neck of his beer bottle. She clinked hers against it. Done.  


"I get veto power over your plans and activities on cases."  


"What? Where did that come from?" A serious gaze and slow, small shake of his head said, no deal.  


"I thought, as long as we're agreeing on things . . ."  


"Nice try, very Special Agent Lisbon. Do I get veto power on you?"  


"Of course not. I'm an agent. You're a consultant."  


"Then we'll have to talk more about this."  


"Unless you want to train as an agent."  


"At Quantico? While you're pregnant and we're building a house? No way. Anyway, it doesn't fit me."  


"You're right. Too much knuckling under."  


"Damn straight."  


"You should only knuckle under to me. That's why I need the veto."  


Jane blew a raspberry, then looked at her quietly. "I don't think you're going to need the veto, now."  


His sincerity was transparent. "Okay. We'll table that and see." She held out her beer bottle and he tapped the neck with his. Done.  


"That's enough wheeling and dealing for today, Teresa."  


"One thing more."  


Jane looked at her in surprise.  


"I'm going to take you to bed and smoke your round little ass in about three minutes."  


Instead of offering his beer bottle, he set it down and got up. Squealing merrily, she dropped her bottle, listening to it roll as he scooped her out of the chair and started for the door, yelling, "Done!"


End file.
